USELESS INFO THURSDAY

~  After 1912 the Olympic gold medal was no longer made entirely of gold.  Under current regulations, each medal must me 92.5% silver and coated with at least 6 grams of 24-karat gold.

~  The Mona Lisa is not painted on canvas.  Leonardo da Vinci painted her on a solid panel of fine-grained white poplar.

~  Nepal is the only country whose flag is not rectangular or square.  It consists of two overlapping right triangles, or pennants, one above the other.

~  There are 118 reeds - or ridges - on the edge of a dime, 150 on the edge of a half-dollar, and 119 on the edge of a quarter.

~  A skunk can accurately aim its foul-smelling spray 15 feet.

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 ~  The horseshoe crab chews its food with its legs.  I does not have jaws or teeth, so it uses small pointy spines at the base of the legs surrounding its mouth to tear and grind food wile moving it upward toward its mouth.

~  Before he invented the hotdog bun, concessionaire Anton Feuchtwanger gave his customers gloves to help them eat his sausages at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.  Gloves helped them no burn their hands or get them dirty.  When customers routinely walked off with the gloves, he had his baker brother-in-law make special dog-size split buns.

~  Because of its shape, France is the European nation known as the hexagon.  In recognition of this, there is a hexagon design on its one and two euro coins.

~  In updating ancient Latin, the Vatican gave the modern definition to the term tempus maximae frequentiae as "rush hour."  The phrase is in the Vatican's "Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis."

~  Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade featured Geronimo and five other Native American chiefs in full tribal regalia riding on horseback down Pennsylvania Avenue.

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 ~  Fingerprints are used to identify people, but did you know that nose prints are used to identify cattle?  Each animal's nose has a distinct pattern of ridges and grooves.

 ~  A Kashmir goat produces only 4 to 6 ounces of cashmere fiber annually.  It takes from 10 to 12 ounces of the goat's soft, fine undercoat to make a woman's single-ply cashmere sweater.  (No wonder it is so expensive!)

 ~  A sumo wrestling tournament is known as a Basho.

 ~  In "The Adventures of Tom Saywer" Tom's half-brother's name was Sid.

~  In the wild, a Komodo dragon - the world's largest living lizard - eats generally once a month.  The carnivorous lizard consumes up to 80 percent of its body weight in one feeding.  It stores fat in its tail to keep going without another meal for a month or more.

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~  A baby porcupine is called a porcupette.

~  In 2006, Bono, who formed a private equity group with five partners, purchased a 40% share in Forbes Media.  The equity group, Elevation, is named after a U2 song.

~  The only state highway that bans motor vehicles is on Mackinac Island, Michigan.  Travel on the scenic eight-mile long M-185 is restricted to foot, bike, horse and horse-drawn carriage.

~  In the Harry Potter books, galleons, sickles, and knuts are coins.  Galleons are gold; sickles, silver; and knuts, bronze.

~  New Orleans Mardi Gras borrowed its official colors - purple, green, and gold - from Russia's royal house of Romanov.  The colors were officially adopted after New Orleans organized it first Mardi Gras in 1872 to honor the visiting grand duke Alexis Romanov.

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NO TIME FOR PICTURES TODAY...SORRY

~  George Washington owned the largest commercial whiskey distillery in 18th-century America.  At it's peak in 1799, the five-still distillery produced 11,000 gallons of whiskey.

~  Clint Eastwood was Boot Camp swimming instructor at Fort Ord, California when he was in the Army during the Korean War.

~  Superman's biological mother's name was Lora Lor-Van.  She was a librarian on the planet Krypton.

~  Why is the island of Stromboli, off the west coast of southern Italy, called the Lighthouse of the Mediterranean?  Because it is an active volcanic island that has been erupting - and giving off a red glow - almost continuously for over 2,000 years.

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 ~  The green jackets at the Masters Tournament were first used in 1937 and were worn by club members so they could easily spotted by tournament spectators seeking information.  The current tradition of awarding a green jacket to the champion was started in 1949, when Sam Snead was the winner.

 ~  Henry Ford threatened to "be through with manufacturing" if Prohibition was repealed.  He explained, "I wouldn't be interested in putting automobiles into the hands of a generation soggy with drink."  He didn't deliver on his threat when Prohibition was repealed.

~  The Kit Kat bar is considered a good luck charm by test-taking Japanese students.  Its Japanese pronunciation, kitto katto, sounds very much like the phrase kitto katsu, which roughly translates to mean "win without fail."

 ~  Spuds McKenzie was really a female bull terrier named Honey Tree Evil Eye.

~  The Jeffersons sitcom ran for 253 episodes from 1975 to 1985, 43 more than its parent sitcom, All in the Family, which ran for 210 episodes from 1971 to 1979.

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 ~  Chopped onions, bell peppers, and celery are considered the "holy trinity" of Louisiana's Cajun and Creole cuisines.

~  Ian Fleming, creator of fictional super spy James Bond (Agent 007), was known as Agent 17F when he spied for British Naval Intelligence during World War II.

 ~  Name the eight ducklings in the children's book "Make Way for Ducklings" - Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack, and Quack.  Their last name is Mallard. (I used to read this to Rachel)

 ~  North Dakota was the last of the 50 states to become home to a commercial winery (in 2002).

~  When they walk, the feet of all four-legged animals normally hit the ground left rear leg first, followed by left foreleg, right rear leg, then right foreleg.

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 ~  The original name for the cheerful Alka-Seltzer mascot who has a tablet body and hat was Sparky.  Soon after he was created in 1951, his name changed to Speedy to reinforce manufacturer Bayer's promise of speedy relief.

 ~  Benjamin Franklin wrote and published a "letter of advice" on the subject of choosing a mistress in 1745.

 ~  PSI trailing is the uncanny ability of a cat, dog, or other pet to find its owner in an unknown distant location or from an unfamiliar place.  PSI stands for psychic.

 ~  Polar bears who wander into the town of Churchhill in Manitoba, Canada when the ice covering the nearby Hudson Bay thaws are held captive in the jail of a former military base.  Up to 23 bears at a time can be held until winter, when they are airlifted to the newly iced-over bay.

~  The Flash (January 1940) was the first comic book hero to acquire superpowers as the result of a lab accident.  He was a college student who became capable of super speed after inhaling "hard water" fumes during a lab mishap.

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~  FORTY is the only number that when spelled out has its letters in alphabetical order

 ~  The basilisk lizard is commonly referred to as the Jesus Christ lizard because of its unique ability to run on water when fleeing predators.  Their web like hind feed make this possible.

~  TIME magazine picked Albert Einstein as the 20th Century's Person of the Century.  In its January 2, 2000 edition, the news weekly described Einstein as "the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed."  (HUH?)

~  Grammium is the special alloy used in making the music industry's Grammy award.  It is a custom zinc and aluminum alloy developed specifically for the Grammies.  After the miniature gramophones are cast in grammium, they are plated in 24-karat gold.

~  Emergency shutdown buttons on control panels in nuclear power plants around the world are routinely labeled "SCRAM" buttons.



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~  The longest possible time an individual can serve as president of the United States is 10 years.  Under Amendment 22 of the U.S. Constitution ratified in 1951, "No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."

~  The term blue blood originated in Spain.  Blue blood was claimed by pure-blooded aristocratic families to differentiate themselves from those who had intermarried.  They were not referring to the color of the blood they bled, but rather to the blueness of their veins, which could be seen clearly through their fair skin.

~  Honey has played a part in the game of golf.  Before the solid core of golf balls was introduced in the late 1960's, most golf balls had a rubber center that was filled with a liquid, which was frequently honey.

~  The U.S. used to distribute cigarettes free to GIs beginning in 1917.  General John J. Pershing claimed that cigarettes were needed "as much as bullets" to win World War I.  They were eliminated from C rations and K rations in 1975.

~  Yoko Ono released an album in 2007 titled "Yes, I'm a Witch."

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I should have probably included something about tornadoes, but I didn't want to press my luck.  Stay safe!

~  Aardvarks eat ants and termites.  The name aardvark means "earth Pig" in the Afrikaans language.

~  When it comes to per capita alcohol consumption, Luxembourg's residents out drink all other countries.  The World Health Organization found that residents of the tiny European country each consume roughly 284 bottles of beer and 88 bottles of wine annually.

~  The 1997 hit movie "Good Will Hunting" was filmed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

~  The Porsche Cayman is named for a relative of the crocodile.  It is named for the caiman because it is "small, agile, fast, and a little bit aggressive," according to a Porsche executive.

~  In 1901, Queen Victoria was buried with a plaster cast of a hand.  The cast was made from the hand of her beloved husband, Albert, who died 40 years earlier.

~  A copy of the Magna Carta made in 1297 was sold at auction in 2007 for an incredible amount of $21,321,000.  It was purchased by billionaire David Rubenstein, who has made it available for display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.